Picking up pieces of intelligence

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Labor's plan for a homeland security department was criticised by US experts at a conference this week. Brendan Nicholson reports.

In June 2000, a security guard approached a man videotaping the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. The man said he was a tourist keen on architecture, and the guard responded: "I didn't think you were going to bomb the joint or anything."

He took down the man's car registration number and logged the incident. That information vanished into the bureaucratic mist.

The architecture-loving tourist turned out to be Jack Roche, and when he was arrested years later, investigators found the videotape complete with the guard's comment. It became a key piece of evidence in the recent trial at which Roche was the first person jailed in Australia for terrorism.

The episode illustrates the need for a more effective system to gather disparate pieces of information coming from a wide range of agencies. Since the 2001 election campaign, the federal Opposition has argued for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the counter-terrorism effort under one minister who would not be distracted by other duties.

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Labor released some details this week to a mixed reception at the Australian Homeland Security Conference in Canberra.

The department would take in the security functions of the Attorney-General's Department, Immigration, Customs and the National Security Division of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which would oversee the transition.

Other agencies that would remain separate while reporting to the Minister for Homeland Security would be the Australian Federal Police (including the proposed new Coastguard), ASIO, the Australian Crime Commission, Austrac (which traces laundered money), Crimtrac (a fingerprint and DNA database) and the Institute of Criminology.

Labor's spokesman on homeland security, Robert McClelland, says the plan would bring a more cohesive and unified command structure, allow greater information sharing on a day-to-day operational level and improve communications generally.

What's needed is more energy and more momentum - less bureaucracy, in fact. PETER JENNINGS, Australian Strategic Policy Institute programs director

McClelland says it's important for Australia to draw on the lessons of the United States, which created such a department two years ago.

But that has drawn a strong warning from Daniel Benjamin, who was director of counter-terrorism in the US National Security Council during the Clinton presidency.

Now a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he warned this week: "Don't make our mistakes."

Benjamin said the US restructuring had not worked well because it was too ambitious. While it was clear after September 11 that some US government functions had to be rationalised, the new department was much less effective than the 22 agencies that went into it.

Benjamin says it will be another two to five years before it gets back to that point. He says the department could be made to function well, but the US overdid it.

McClelland says Labor's plan is less ambitious.

Is there a third possibility? Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James says the system needs to be streamlined but the answer is not another major department.

James suggests a National Security Council of senior ministers and relevant department heads. The National Security Committee of Cabinet already works that way and includes key ministers and the heads of agencies such as ASIO and the Federal Police.

Beneath the committee is another group, the Secretaries Committee on National Security (or SCONS) which is made up of senior bureaucrats; James says that layer should go.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute programs director Peter Jennings says the system can be improved but a new department would worsen the problem by adding an extra player to the game.

The US change added to a tremendous bureaucratic tangle. "There's been an enormous challenge in wrenching people out of old organisations and putting them into a new one," Jennings said.

"What's needed is more energy and more momentum - less bureaucracy, in fact."

Jennings suggests that someone with the clout of a department head should be made an adviser to the prime minister on terrorism. That official would be the main focus and source of authority on terrorism and would be backed by a small staff to oversee the agencies, evaluate intelligence and coordinate activities.

Jennings says the government has plugged all of the obvious gaps. "But you can't sit back on your laurels, because the terrorists are always looking for points of vulnerability," he says.

"The game moves on and I think the next phase is going to be something that requires that high-level coordination, priority and impetus that a secretary-level adviser on terrorism could provide."